Latvian Jews

Latvian Jews are Jewish people from the country of Latvia, a Baltic nation in northeastern Europe. Most Jews lived in the Courland region, and they were allowed to remain in Latvia (outside of the Pale of Settlement) by the Russian Empire if they could prove that their ancestors had lived in the region since before the 1700s. In 1836, 4.3% of Latvia was Jewish, making up 14,475 of the 307,990 inhabitants of the region. From 1925 to 1935, many Jews began to make aliyah to Mandatory Palestine, with 6,000 Jews leaving the country. When Nazi Germany took over the Baltics during Operation Barbarossa in 1941, the Einsatzgruppen slaughtered several Jews, and many more were forced into ghettoes. By the end of 1941, 35,38 Latvian Jews had been killed in the liquidation of Latvia's ghettoes, and only 36,592 Jews remained in Latvia by 1959. In 2011, only 416 Jews lived in Latvia, with the rest eigrating to Israel or elsewhere.